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ANN PHILLIPS 



WIFE OF WENDELL PHILLIPS 



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BOSTON 

Pnntetr for Private divtnUtim 

1886 






Copyright, 1886. ' ''^ ■ 



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T?ie Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 



Ann Phillips, wife of Wendell Phillips, died 
at her residence. No. 37 Common Street, Boston, 
on the evening of Saturday, April 24, 1886, after 
an invalidism which had kept her closely confined 
to her house for the greater part of fifty years. 
She was born in Boston on the 19th of November, 
1813, and was a daughter of the late Benjamin 
Greene, of this city, and Mary Grew (from Bir- 
mingham, England), his wife.^ They both died in 
middle life, leaving a large family of young chil- 
dren, of whom Mrs. Phillips was the last survivor. 
Soon after the death of her parents she was re- 
ceived as a daughter into the family of her uncle 
and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Chapman, then liv- 
ing in Chauncy Place, near Summer Street ; and 
when, in the year 1834, the entire Chapman fam- 
ily espoused the despised and unpopular cause of 
the slave, and allied themselves with Mr. Garrison 
and his little band of adherents, this beautiful and 
interesting young girl ardently sympathized with 
them, and threw herself heart and soul into the 
movement. Her zeal and enthusiasm were unflas:- 

^ John Grew, the father of Mary Grew, was a friend and 
townsman of Dr. Joseph Priestley, and warmly sympathized 
with him in his advanced and liberal ideas. 



4 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

ging, and if lier uncertain health prevented her 
taking so conspicuous a part as some others, she 
was nevertheless a most valuable and valued ally, 
clear-sighted, wise in counsel, brave and hopeful in 
the darkest hours. In social circles her brightness, 
vivacity, and ready conversational powers made 
her a general favorite, and she improved every 
opportunity to present and urge the arguments 
of the Abolitionists, and to convert the hostile 
and the timid who would consent to listen to them. 
It was not surprising, therefore, that when Wen- 
dell Phillips, whose interest in the anti-slavery 
movement had been awakened by Mrs. Child's 
"Appeal," and strengthened by the sight of the 
Garrison Mob, met Miss Greene, he was soon con- 
vinced by her fervid appeals that the cause de- 
manded not merely sympathy and occasional help 
from him, but a life-long consecration, to the exclu- 
sion of all worldly considerations ; and it was 
equally natural that he found the personal charms 
of a young lady inspired and fairly aglow with 
such high moral themes, irresistible. The same 
year (1836) that witnessed his engagement to Ann 
Greene was marked by his first speech on an anti- 
slavery platform, at Lynn, Mass., and it was 
shortly after their marriage in the following year 
that he made that brilliant speech at the Love- 
joy meeting in Faneuil Hall, which placed him at 
once in the first rank of orators, and from which 
his public career properly dates. 

Of Mr. Phillips's unbounded admiration and love 



ANN TERBY GREENE PHILLIPS. 5 

for his wife^^of his chivalrous devotion to her, and 
absolute self-abuegation through the more than 
forty-six years of their married life, and of his oft- 
confessed indebtedness to her for her wise counsel 
and inspiration, matchless courage, and unswerving 
constancy, the world knows in a general way; but 
ony those who have been intimately acquainted 
with them both can fully realize and appreciate it 
an. ihey also know how ardent was her affection 
tor him, and how great her pride in his labors and 
achievements. There are some charming glimpses 
of her feelings towards him in the letters which she 
wrote to near friends during the early years of her 
marriage, before the pen became so wearisome to 
her that she allowed it to faU into disuse. "My 
better three-quarters," she called him frequently 
it was evidently a case of love at first sight on her 
part, no less than on his, for - " When I first met 
Wendell,' she wrote, "I used to think, 'it can 
never come to pass; such a being as he is could 
never think of me.' I looked upon it as somethinc 
as strange as fairy-tale." And on her first birtht 
day after her marriage she wrote to a relative as 
lollows : — 

"November 19, 1837. Do you remember it is 
Ann Terry's birthday, and that I am so aged ? I 
thmk I feel younger than that seventeenth birthday 
eve. What piteous expressions I used, as if I had 
almost completed threescore and ten ! . . . Only 
last year, on my sick-bed, I thought I should never 
see another birthday, and I must go and leave him 



6 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

in the infancy of our love, in tlie dawn of my new 
life ; and how does to-day find me ? — the blessed 
and happy wife of one I thought I should never 
perhaps live to see. Thanks be to God for all his 
goodness to us, and may he make me more worthy 
of my Wendell ! I cannot help thinking how little 
I have acquired, and Wendell, only two years older, 
seems to know a world more, — 

* That still my wonder grew, 
How one small head could carry all he knew.' " 

With all this ardent admiration of her husband's 
powers, and modest depreciation of her own, she 
possessed a keen insight, a sure instinct, and a 
sound judgment as to measures and principles, 
which he ever recognized and deferred to, and she 
often discussed with him, before he left her to at- 
tend a convention or deliver an address, the aspects 
of the question which she felt he ought specially 
to urge and emphasize. He cared more for her 
criticism and her approval than for all the plau- 
dits of the admiring thousands who were stirred by 
his marvellous oratory. 

In June, 1839, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips went 
abroad and remained two years, spending their win- 
ters on the Continent, and their summers in Great 
Britain, where they enjoyed meeting the choice cir- 
cle of Abolitionists who were in close sympathy 
and affiliation with their American brethren. Note- 
worthy among these were Elizabeth Pease, a noble 
young Quaker lady of Darlington, England, and 
Eichard D. Webb, of Dublin, also a Quaker, and 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 7 

one of the most genial and witty of men. With 
Miss Pease a close friendship sprang up, followed 
by an intimate correspondence which continued for 
years after they returned to America, and they 
spent as much time as possible in her society and 
companionship. 

In September, 1839, they were at Lyons, and 
the ensuing winter they devoted to Rome, whence 
Mr. Phillips wrote, on the 5th of January, 1840 : 

"It seems useless to catalogue interesting ob- 
jects, so numerous are they here ; yet catalogues 
are more eloquent than descriptions. The Caesars' 
palace speaks for itself. To stand in the Pantheon, 
on which Paul's eyes may have rested, what needs 
one more to feel? We have been up Trajan's Pil- 
lar by the very steps the old Roman feet once trod ; 
rode over the pavement on which Constantine en- 
tered in triumph ; seen the Colosseum (I by moon- 
light, and heard the ' dog bay,' though not ' beyond 
the Tiber ' that I know of) ; lost ourselves in that 
little world of dazzling, bewildering beauty, the 
Vatican, where the Laocoon breathes in never-end- 
ing agony, and eternal triumph beams from the 
brow of the Apollo. We have dived into Titus's 
baths, and the half-buried ruins of Nero's ' Golden 
house,' where the frescoes are blooming and fresh 
after eighteen hundred years." 

In June they were back in London to attend the 
World's Anti-Slavery Convention, to which they 
had both been appointed delegates by the Massa- 
chusetts Anti-Slavery Society ; but Mrs. Phillips, 



8 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

with her sister delegates (Lucretia Mott, Mary- 
Grew, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber, Elizabeth Neall, 
and Emily Winslow), was denied admission on the 
ground of sex. " Don't shilly-shally, Wendell ! " 
was her injunction to her husband when he went 
into the convention to contend for the right of the 
women to take their seats in it, and manfully he 
argued their cause ; but bigotry prevailed, and they 
were compelled to go into the gallery as spectators, 
instead of on the floor as members. The social 
enjoyments of the month were many and constant, 
however, and in the delightful society of the friends 
named above, of Mr. Garrison, Nathaniel P. Rog- 
ers, and other American delegates, and of Miss 
Pease, George Thompson, and Eichard D. Webb, 
with opportunities for meeting scores of eminent 
and philanthropic men and women whose reputa- 
tions were world-wide, the weeks slipped away aU 
too rapidly. After the convention was over they 
went, in July, by way of Belgium and the Rhine, to 
Kissingen, in Bavaria, in the vain hope that the 
waters there would prove beneficial to Mrs. Phillips. 
Describing their journey thither, Mr. Phillips wrote 
(August 6, 1840) : — 

" To Americans it was specially pleasant to see, 
at Frankfort, the oldest printed Bible in the world, 
and two pair of Luther's shoes ! ! ! which Ann 
would not quit sight of till I had mustered bad 
German enough, by aid of memory and dictionary 
and some mixing of French, to ask the man to let 
the ' little girl ' feel of them. So, being permitted 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 9 

to hold the great man's slippers in her own hands, 
the man watching to see she did not vanish with 
them, the ' Delegate from Massachusetts ' was con- 
tented to leave the room. But she'll speak for 
herself." 

The letter is addressed to Elizabeth Pease, and 
Mrs. Phillips adds : " We are settled down in this 
little, quiet village, and strange indeed it is after 
the busy London hours. How much we enjoyed 
there ! Even I have a world to look back upon, 
though I was able to take but little share in the 
rich feasts of heart and mind. It was the remark 
of the great physician Hunter that he should be 
happy through eternity if God would but let him 
muse upon all he had seen and learnt in this world. 
So what a never-ending store of recollection you 
will have in this visit from those you have so long 
known (though not face to face). How hallowed 
will be to you the memory of those hours of com- 
munion with such a being as Garrison ! I thought 
you could not but love him." 

The waters of Briickenau, another Bavarian spa, 
proved no more beneficial than those of Kissingen, 
and the Phillipses were glad to devote the autumn, 
which was a delightful one, to travel in Switzerland 
and northern Italy. Leaving Germany by way of 
Heidelberg, their course took them to the Falls of 
the Rhine, Zurich and Lake Lucerne, Berne, Inter- 
laken ( " over that gem of a lake by Thun "), the 
Staubbach and Wengern Alp, and Lausanne, and 
in October they crossed the Simplon to Milan. 



10 ^AW TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

" After a fortnight of glorious weather," wrote Mr. 
Phillips (from Florence, November 19), " we started 
for Florence by Bologna, that jewel of a city, . . . 
for she admits women to be professors in her uni- 
versity, her gallery guards their paintings, her pal- 
aces boast their sculptures. I gloried in standing 
before a woman-professor's monument set up side 
by side with that of the illustrious Galvani." 

In January, 1841, they were staying at Leghorn 
for the sake of the sea-breezes, and three months 
later they were at Naples, whence Mr. Phillips 
wrote (April 12) to Mr. Garrison: "Nothing 
brings home so pleasantly, or with so much vivid- 
ness, to Ann, as seeing a colored man occasionally 
in the street ; so you see we are ready to return to 
our posts in nothing changed." 

They came back to England by way of Paris, and 
spent the last half of June in London, with Miss 
Pease, finally sailing from Liverpool for home on 
the 4th of July.^ After their return they passed a 
few weeks with Mr. Phillips's mother at her sum- 
mer home in Nahant, which Mrs. Phillips thus de- 
scribes : — 

" Picture to yourself a great wooden house, with 
doors and blinds as usual, a mile from any other 
habitation, little grass and fewer trees, and you 
have Phillips's Cliff. The village of Nahant is 
about a mile from our house ; there Dame Fashion 

1 The silhouette of Mrs. Phillips which forms the frontis- 
piece of this Memorial, and is believed to be the only por- 
trait ever made of her, was cut just before they left London. 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 11 

struts about three months o£ summer, but we have 
the blessing of being out of her way and doing as 
we please. Here dwells, in summer, Wendell's 
mother ; one of her daughters with five children one 
side of the house, we with her in the other. What 
with fifteen children and twenty grandchildren at 
intervals dropping in upon her, you see she is not 
alone. We rise about seven, breakfast at half 
past. Wendell rows the boat for exercise ; bathes. 
I walk with him in the morning ; dine at two ; in 
the afternoon we ride with Mother ; tea at seven ; 
in the evening we play chess or back-gammon 
with her, or some brother and sister come to pass 
the night, and we dispute away on the great ques- 
tions. We are considered as heretics and almost 
infidels, but we pursue the even tenor of our way 
undisturbed. Sometimes Wendell goes off aboli- 
tionizing for two or three days, but I remain ou 
the ground." 

In November of the same year Mr. and Mrs. 
Phillips moved into the modest brick house num- 
bered 26 Essex Street, which remained their home 
for more than forty years. It was barely large 
enough for the accommodation of themselves and 
the necessary servants, and as Mrs. Phillips's ill- 
health prevented their entertaining visitors, it 
seemed wise to select a house which afforded no 
temptation for doing so. A dining-room and 
kitchen were on the first floor, a double parlor of 
diminutive size, but bright and sunny and making 
a cheerful study, on the second, and smaU cham- 



12 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

bers in the third and attic stories. One of the j&rst 
letters from the new home was addressed (by Mr. 
Phillips) to Elizabeth Pease, and dated November 
25, 1841 : — 

" I am writing in our own parlor — wish you 
were in it — on ' Thanksgiving Day.' Did you ever 
hear of that name ? 'T is an old custom in New 
England, begun to thank God for a providential 
arrival of food from the mother-country in sixteen 
hundred and odd year, and perpetuated now wher- 
ever a New Englander dwells, some time in autumn, 
by the Governor's appointment. All is hushed of 
business about me; the devout pass the morning 
at church ; those who have wandered to [other] 
cities hurry back to worship to-day where their 
fathers knelt, and gather sons and grandsons, to 
the littlest prattler, under the old roof -tree to — 
shall I break the picture ? — to cram as much tur- 
key and plum-pudding as possible ; a sort of com- 
promise by Puritan love of good eating for denying 
itself that ' wicked papistrie,' Christmas." 

A humorous account follows of the first trials of 
the young housekeepers with unpromising servants, 
and there is mention of a friend's calling and find- 
ing him sawing a piece of soapstone : — 

" I set to work to fix a chimney, having a great 
taste for carpentering and mason-work. (When I 
set up for a gentleman, there was a good mechanic 
spoiled, Ann says.) . . . Ann's health is about the 
same. She gets tired out every day trying to over- 
see *the keeping house,' as we Americans call it 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 13 

when two persons take more rooms than they need, 
buy double the things they want, hire two or three 
others, just, for all the world, for the whole five to 
devote themselves to keeping the establishment in 
order. I long for the time when there '11 be no need 
of sweeping and dusting, and when eating will be 
forgotten." 

Four months later Mrs. Phillips takes up the 
pen to give " some little insight into in-door life at 
No. 26 Essex Street " : — 

" There is your Wendell seated in the arm-chair, 
lazy and easy as ever, perhaps a little fatter than 
when you saw him, still protesting how he was 
ruined by marrying. Your humble servant looks 
like the Genius of Famine, as she always did, one 
of Pharaoh's lean kine. She laughs considerably, 
continues in health in the same naughty way, has 
been pretty well, for her, this winter. Now what 
do you think her life is ? Why, she strolls out a 
few steps occasionally, calling it a walk ; the rest 
of the time, from bed to sofa, from sofa to rocking- 
chair; reads generally the Standard and Libera- 
tor., and that is pretty much all the literature her 
aching head will allow her to peruse ; rarely writes 
a letter, sees no company, makes no calls, looks for- 
ward to spring and birds, when she will be a little 
freer ; is cross very often, pleasant at other times, 

loves her dear L and thinks a great deal of 

her ; and now you have Ann Phillips. 

" Now I '11 take up another strain. This winter 
has been marked to us by our keeping house for 



14 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

the first time. I call it housekeeping ; but, alas ! 
we have not the pleasure of entertaining angels, 
awares or unawares. We have a small house, but 
large enough for us, only a few rooms furnished, — 
just enough to try to make me more comfortable 
than at board. But then I am not well enough even 
to have friends to tea, so that all I strive to do is to 
keep the house neat and keep myself about. I have 
attended no meetings since I helped fill ' the negro 
pew.' What anti-slavery news I get, I get second- 
hand. I should not get along at all, so great is 
my darkness, were it not for Wendell to tell me 
that the world still is going. . . . We are very 
happy, and only have to regret my health being so 
poor, and our own sinfulness.^ Dear Wendell 
speaks whenever he can leave me, and for his sake 
I sometimes wish I were myself again ; but I dare 
say it is all right as it is." 

One more extract must suffice, and this from a 
letter written by Mr. Phillips in August, 1854, to 
the same dear and intimate friend : — 

" We are this summer at Milton, one of the 
most delightful of our country towns, about ten 
miles from Boston. Ann's brother has a place 
here, and we are with him. She is as usual — 
little sleep, very weak, never goes down -stairs, in 
most excellent and cheerful spirits, interested keenly 

^ Her sad experience of invalidism made her anxious for 
the good health of her friends, a solicitude often expressed 
in her letters. To a blooming young bride who called on 
her she said : " You are healthy, aren't you, dear ? " 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 15 

in all good things, and, I sometimes tell her, so 
much my motive and prompter to every good thing 
that I fear, should I lose her, there 'd be nothing 
of me left worth your loving." 

To the few intimates whom Mrs. PhUlips allowed 
to visit her freely there was seldom any symptom of 
depression or despondency visible. The sunny 
south chamber, having an outlook down Harrison 
Avenue, was bright with flowers, of which the in- 
valid was passionately fond. In midwinter she 
would have nasturtiums, smilax, and costly ex- 
otics, later the brilliant tulips, and then the blos- 
soms of spring, the May-flowers and anemones, un- 
til the garden rose and sweetbrier appeared. All 
these were supplied by loving hands and caused 
her unceasing delight. Nor did her personal ap- 
pearance often betoken invalidism. She had good 
color, a strong voice and hearty laugh, so that it 
was difficult to think her ill. Conversation never 
flagged. She was eager to hear about and to dis- 
cuss the news of the day, especially in anti-slavery 
and reformatory lines ; she took the warmest inter- 
est in the affairs of her friends, and to the poor 
and needy, who brought stories of sorrow and suf- 
fering and wrongs endured, her and her husband's 
sympathy and aid were freely given. There was 
no lack of cheer, and merriment, and sparkling 
humor from husband and wife, when two or three 
chosen friends were gathered in the sick-room, and 
shouts of laughter from it resounded through the 
house. " Gay as the gayest bird is Ann T. Greene," 



16 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

was written of her by a rhyming schoolmate when 
she was a girl, and she continued to merit the 
characterization. She was very fond of music, as 
was her father before her; and, debarred from 
going to concerts, she found pleasure in listening 
to the strains of the hand-organs which were fre- 
quently played beneath her window. 

Her pecuniary contributions to the anti-slavery 
cause were constant and liberal ; but the contribu- 
tion which caused her far more self-denial was to 
encourage and urge her husband to leave her and 
go off " abolitionizing " for a few days, and now 
and then to make an extended tour westward ; but, 
as a rule, he would rarely absent himself from 
home more than two or three days, and usually 
only for a night at a time, when his lecture engage- 
ments were so far away as to make it impossible 
for him to return home the same evening. He 
daily visited the markets in search of delicacies to 
gratify the invalid's appetite, and could often be 
seen wending his way homeward, his hands full of 
parcels for "Ann." In the summer they would 
go into the country for two or three months, occa- 
sionally experimenting with the water-cure and 
other methods of treatment for Mrs., Phillips, all 
of which proved futile. One of these was mesmer- 
ism, and, speaking of the difficulty of finding a 
good operator in it, and of her husband's being the 
best she had had, Mrs. Phillips wrote, humorously 
(January 31, 1846) : " So the poor, devoted Wen- 
dell is caught, one hour of his busy day, and seated 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 17 

down to hold my tJiumhs / . . * I grow sicker every 
year, Wendell lovelier, I more desponding, he al- 
ways cheery and telling me that I shall live not 
only to be ' fat and forty,' but fat and scolding at 
eighty ! " The letter continues : — 

'' Dear Wendell has met with a sad affliction this 
fall in the death of his mother, who left us in No- 
vember. She was everything to him, — indeed, to 
all her children ; a devoted mother and uncommon 
woman. ^ ... So poor unworthy I am more of a 
treasure to Wendell than ever, and a pretty frail 
one. For his sake I should love to live ; for my 
own part I am tired, not of life but of a sick one. 
I meet with but little sympathy, for these long cases 
are looked upon as half, if not wholly, maJce-he- 
lieves, — as if playing well would not be far better 
than playing sick. I value your love and sympa- 
thy only the more that I find so few who know how 
to feel for me." 

A new and delightful element came into their 
childless home when they received, in 1850, the 
little orphaned daughter of Mrs. Eliza Garnaut, 
one of the noblest and most self-sacrificing women 

1 " Dear Ann has spoken of my dear mother's death," wrote 
Mr. Phillips on the same sheet. "My good, noble, dear 
mother ! We differed utterly on the matter of slavery, and 
she grieved a good deal over what she thought was a waste 
of my time, and a sad disappointment to her; but still I am 
always best satisfied with myself when I fancy I can see any- 
thing in me which reminds me of my mother. She lived in 
her children, and they almost lived in her, and the world is 
a different one, now she is gone." 



18 ANN TERRY GREENE PHIL LIPS. 

who ever walked the streets of Boston ; who liter- 
ally spent herself for others, and died a victim to 
her unselfish devotion in 1849. Mr. Phillips's 
beautiful tribute to her will be found in the Lib- 
erty Bell for 1851. The little girl, who now be- 
came as a daughter to them, was a constant joy- 
to them both. "Ann busies herself with lessons 
and French exercises as when she herself went to 
school," wrote Mr. Phillips, who himself took pleas- 
ure in directing the child's education, and found 
in her a bright and loving companion until mar- 
riage took her away to another city, and finally to 
a foreign land. 

For some years Essex Street was the centre of 
the small anti - slavery community of Boston. 
Within five minutes' walk to the south lived Fran- 
cis Jackson, and Samuel and Mary May, on HoUis 
Street, and the Garrison family, on Dix Place. 
Not much farther away, in the opposite direction, 
were Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring, on Winter 
Street ; while just around the corner, to the north, 
were Theodore Parker's house, on Exeter Place, 
Miss Mary G. Chapman's, on Chauncy Street, — the 
Boston home of the Weston sisters and Mrs. Chap- 
man, when they came to the city, — and Charles 
F. Hovey's, on Kingston Street. Mr. Phillips has 
told how often, as he looked from his own chamber 
window late at night, when some lecture engage- 
ment had brought him home in the small hours of 
the morning, he saw the unquenched light burning 
in Theodore Parker's study — " that unflagging 
student ever at work." 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 19 

One by one these friends died or moved away ; 
Essex Street, so long a quiet, respectable street, 
occupied wholly by residences, was gradually in- 
vaded by business stores ; the neighborhood became 
infested with drinking-saloons, and the whole char- 
acter of the locality changed. Friends wondered 
how the Phillipses could endure to remain there, 
but they clung to their old home ^ with the most 
passionate attachment; and when, in 1882, the 
building was finally condemned to removal by the 
city authorities, for the purpose of widening and 
extending the adjacent streets, they left it with the 
greatest reluctance and sorrow. Another small 
house, singularly resembling it in many respects, 
was found at 37 Common Street, and rented by 
them, but they could never become reconciled to 
it, or make it seem homelike. Mrs. Phillips's ill- 
ness had deepened before they left Essex Street. 

1 The view of the Essex Street house which is given in 
the accompanying picture, is from a photograph taken in 
1882 by Mr. J. W. Black, who has kindly permitted its repro- 
duction here. Mrs. Phillips's chamber was in the third story, 
above her husband's study, and during the turbulent winter 
of 1860-61 she could look out upon the crowds (composed of 
both friends and mobocrats) that followed Mr. Phillips home 
from his Sunday morning discourses at Music Hall, and gath- 
ered in a surging mass before the house. 

The vignette on the title-page is a portrait of Mr. Phillips 
standing in his doorway, — an admirable and characteristic 
likeness. The soft gray hat, the coat, the graceful figure 
and fine profile, will be recognized at once by all who were 
familiar with his appearance as he daily walked the streets 
of his beloved city. 



20 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

In little more than a year after they went to Com- 
mon Street, her devoted and tireless husband, nurse, 
and care-taker was suddenly snatched from her, 
and after that irreparable loss she secluded herself 
more than ever from her friends, endured constant 
suffering, and gradually failed, until death came 
as a merciful release. On the night of Friday, 
April 23, she became unconscious and fell into a 
deep sleep that knew no waking, and before mid- 
night on Saturday she ceased to breathe. 

The few life-long friends who were privileged 
to look upon her face the follomng Easter morn- 
ing were startled by its expression. She lay as if 
asleep, with all the purity and guilelessness of her 
youthful face ripened to maturity. It seemed 
transfiguration, and the memory of it will always 
be a joy and an inspiration. 

" Knowledge by sufPering entereth, 
And life is perfected by deatb." 



At the simple funeral service which was held at 
the house on Wednesday noon, April 28, her and 
her husband's friend. Rev. Samuel May of Leices- 
ter, Mass., read a portion of the Burial Service of 
the King's Chapel Book of Prayer, and made the 
following beautiful and comforting remarks : — 

"We stand again at the parting of the ways. 
Again a mortal pilgrimage has closed, and a life 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 21 

unfettered by mortal conditions has begun. The 
natural body has done and borne to the utmost ; its 
burdens, pains, and griefs have ceased forever. 
Now she, who has been an almost life-long prisoner, 
wellnigh unable to move from one narrow spot, 
may ' awake and run the heavenly race,' and know 
a strange freedom amidst heaven's pure airs, amidst 
the ' solemn troops and sweet societies ' of those 
she had loved and lost, and of that greater multi- 
tude whom she had borne on her heart from her 
youth, — to soothe and relieve whose wrongs and 
sufferings had so long been the solace of her own 
grief and pain. 

" Would that some one stood in my place to bear 
such full testimony to her life as it has so richly 
merited at our hands. Would that a voice as elo- 
quent, a perception of her worth as just as were his 
who rendered her loyal and loving service so long, 
could now testify to the life which, with all its 
hindrances, limitations, and clouds, we must de- 
clare — for its truth, patience, depth of feeling, 
unfaltering faith, and undaunted courage — to have 
been nothing less than sublime. 

" There is no need that I should much enlarge 
upon this strange, though uneventful, life, known 
to you better than to me. In the silence of our 
thoughts we trace her long life from childhood to 
beyond the verge of threescore years and ten. 
Who of us can fitly measure those protracted years, 
to which health was a stranger, but which her over- 
mastering will saved from dull acquiescence and 



22 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

mere endurance, and made a living spring, a per- 
petual fountain of beneficence, of hope and glad- 
ness, to many of the neediest of earth ? Her young 
girl's heart was good soil for the first lessons of 
anti-slavery truth. That great, but scarcely rec- 
ognized, cause found in her a keen intelligence, 
a quick conscience, a genuine sympathy. When 
probably not one of her young friends, beyond her 
immediate kindred, would have bestowed a thought, 
or only a contemptuous one, upon the wrongs of 
the enslaved millions of a boastful and blinded 
republic, she acce^oted the obligation at once and 
made those wrongs the care of her daily life. 
Wendell Phillips, her young lover, was led by her 
to see the greatness of the cause and its claims on 
him and every true American, and ever owned his 
indebtedness to her for that light and for the great 
impulse which bound him to its service. He once 
told me that, in Paris, they met in the street, one 
day, a black man, and she exclaimed with evident 
pleasure : ' How good it is to see a black face 
again ! ' How should we thank God for those 
noble natures which never forget duty, which never 
turn their backs on a principle, however disre- 
garded by men, and which, by their steadfast ad- 
herence to it, instruct and inspire multitudes, and 
make the triumph not only possible, but sure ! 

" From the time of her return to America her 
fate as a sufferer seemed to be sealed. Still her 
spirit was onward, clear-sighted, vigilant, sending 
forth messages of cheer and warning as she saw 



ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 23 

need. Witli most of us a kind of mystery came to 
envelop her. Years and years passed; we never 
saw her ; but we always read the name Ann T. G. 
Phillips among the foremost in every call to ac- 
tion, in every acknowledgment of help. She was a 
recognized power, though unseen. She was a strong 
helper, though in such bodily weakness. For hers 
were will, courage, and faith — mighty through 
God to do all things. In her enforced seclusion 
she often saw more clearly than her husband the 
special work for him to do ; and he was accustomed 
to be largely guided by her counsel. 

" What unfathomable mysteries surround us ! 
The ways of our human life are often in thick 
darkness. Although disease and pain had long 
borne her down, — their burden never lifted, — 
a severer trial, a bitterer burden, was yet to visit 
her. What none could have anticipated, the strong 
and active man, on whom she so depended, was to 
be taken away, and she in her helplessness was to 
be left ! If this terrible blow should have some- 
what disturbed her mind's balance, who can won- 
der ? If, in her deepening suffering, bodily and 
mental, she sometimes cried out for a relief and 
help which never in the flesh could come to her, 
was it surprising ? ' Having been a little afflicted,' 
said the wise man of old, ' they shall be greatly re- 
warded.' We reverently thank God for those two 
grand, yes, wonderful, lives, which so singularly 
supplemented each other. In one sense they are 
lost to us ; but, in a far higher, they become the 



24 ANN TERRY GREENE PHILLIPS. 

eternal possession of all true and faithful souls. 
Separated for a little while, we rejoice in the faith 
that Ann and Wendell Phillips walk hand in 
hand once more. 

* Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
Stand dressed in living green.' 

Oh, that it may, in infinite mercy, be given us to 
have an entrance there, — they and we together 
entering into the joy of our Lord ! " 

After Mr. May had finished, Mrs. Lucy Stone 
and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe spoke with deep feel- 
ing and appreciation of Mrs. Phillips, and in felic- 
itous characterization of her noble qualities, and 
then the kindred, with a few near friends, followed 
the remains of both Ann and Wendell Phillips 
(the latter's being now removed from their tem- 
porary resting-place in the Old Granary Burying- 
Ground) to the beautiful cemetery at Milton. 
They were buried side by side in the same grave, 
in a spot which Mr. Phillips had himself selected, 
a year or two before his death. A noble pine-tree 
stands near it, and the view, before the foliage is 
out, is extensive and charming. Nature, in her 
early spring mood, could not have given a brighter 
or lovelier day, or one more fitting for an occasion 
where sorrow had no place, and there could be only 
joy and thanksgiving for the reunion of two noble 
souls. 






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